style. The country has the same lovely aspect as in the vicinity of San
Jose; great level plains teeming in wild grain, and wide-spreading
foliage of oaks, chesnuts, maple and willows, enclosed between
high-swelling hills. In fact the country for more than forty leagues of
this broad valley is so perfectly level that a coach could be driven in
any direction without serious obstruction; however, there is one
annoyance to which horses are subjected, in the multitudes of holes
burroughed by a species of ground squirrels, very frequently bringing
horse and rider to their faces. A few leagues rapid travelling brought
us in sight of the southern arm of the waters of San Francisco, and
skirting along its shores, by sunset we had left the low country,
traversed the rugged hills of the sea-girt peninsular, floundered knee
deep in the sandy road, and by nightfall I found myself comfortably
housed with a generous batchelor friend, Mr. Frank Ward, in Yerbabuena.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] This Mission, according to Vancouver, was established in 1778, by
Franciscans, which, with one founded three years previously at San
Francisco, were the northernmost settlements of any description formed
by the court of Spain, on the continental shores of north-west America,
exclusive of Nootka. Although the Jesuits had planted the cross on the
lower territory, on the peninsula at Loretto (1697), they had not
explored the west coast. Of all the numerous voyagers of note who have
visited and written upon California--Perouse, Vancouver, Kotzbue,
Belcher, Wilkes, and others--there is not one whose delineations are
characterized with so much truth and simplicity as Vancouver,--not only
in this territory, but in the groups of Polynesia. He must have been
truly a good man. His intercourse with the untutored savages of the
Pacific was ever tempered with justice and humanity. He did more than
any succeeding navigator in stocking the islands with cattle, and his
scientific duties were executed with exceeding accuracy for the means at
his command. The English may well be proud of the renown he has shed
upon the land of his birth; and his name will be for ever cherished in
the Pacific, when the unscrupulous deeds of his great Commander shall
have been forgotten.

CHAPTER XVII.

Remaining but a few days in Yerbabuena, and when on the point of taking
leave, I met with a brace of navy men, who were about to sail up the Bay
for a hunt among the hills; so givin